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Monday, 20 March 2017

The Trial of the Scottish Chartists - by Ann Swinfen

The history of the Chartist movement in England is
widely known and well documented. Less well known, perhaps, is the Chartist
movement in Scotland, and
the trial which took place in Edinburgh
in November, 1848, of three of its leaders.

1848 Paris

The year, 1848, was one which shook the
foundations of society throughout Europe, and
came to be known as ‘the year of revolutions’. Starting in France, a
series of uprisings spread through more than fifty countries, sparked off by a
sustained period of agricultural failures and unemployment. Generally started
by a loose and unsustainable alliance of the middle and working classes, they
sought to overthrow the long established power of the old European
aristocracies and promote more widespread democracy.

1848 Poland - slaughter of aristocrats

Tens of thousands died.
Although the wider aims of the movements were not achieved, there were some
victories, such as the abolition of serfdom in Hungary
and Austria,
and the establishment of more democratic forms of government in some countries.

1848 Serbia

The roots of Chartism in Britain,
however, lay ten years earlier. The Reform Act of 1832 not having satisfied widespread
demands for reform to the rights to vote and to stand for election, in 1837 six
working men and six members of Parliament formed a committee which in 1838
produced the People’s Charter, a
document which set out the six fundamental principles of Chartism. These were:

A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind,
and not undergoing punishment for a crime.

A secret ballot to protect the elector in the exercise of his
vote.

No property qualification for Members of Parliament in order to
allow the constituencies to return the man of their choice.

Payment of Members of Parliament, enabling tradesmen, working
men, or other persons of modest means to leave or interrupt their
livelihood to attend to the interests of the Nation.

Equal constituencies, securing the same amount of
representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing less
populous constituencies to have as much or more weight than larger ones.

Annual Parliamentary elections, thus presenting the most
effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since no purse could buy a
constituency under a system of universal manhood suffrage in each
twelve-month period.

The movement was thus intended to achieve
its aims by constitutional means, and not by means of the violence employed
during the 1848 uprisings in continental Europe,
when many aristocrats were ruthlessly slaughtered, and the rebellions were put
down with equal ruthlessness.

In Britain,
following the publication of the Charter, enormous mass rallies were held,
particularly in the north of England,
in the industrial Midlands, in the south Wales
mining valleys, and in Glasgow.
Millions of people signed petitions in support of the Chartist aims.

Presenting the 1842 petition to Parliament

Popular
support was further increased by a flood of Chartist newspapers and pamphlets,
and by many of its early leaders the Charter was seen as a means to improve the
living conditions of the working classes. Chartism was a ‘knife and fork, a
bread and cheese question’, according to one of them, Joseph Rayner Stephens.
However, there were others who advocated more extreme methods of achieving
political reform, and their activities caused serious alarm amongst the
authorities, who were not unmindful of matters in the rest of Europe.
Stephens himself was arrested and imprisoned for taking part in an unlawful
assembly.

Chartist activity and the attempts of the
authorities to suppress it continued throughout the late 1830s and early 1840s,
then with the rise of revolutionary movements in continental Europe there was a
resurgence of support for Chartism in Britain during 1848. The violence
of extreme Chartists escalated, as did the legislation passed to curb their activities
and the punishments meted out to those found guilty.

High Court of Justiciary

It was against this background that the
trial took place at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh of the three Scottish Chartist
leaders – John Grant, Henry Ranken, and Robert Hamilton. The charges against
the accused stated that they ‘did…wickedly and feloniously, combine and
conspire…with other persons to the prosecutor unknown, calling themselves
Chartists, to effect an alteration of the laws and constitution of the
realm…not peaceably and lawfully, and loyally, but by force and violence, or by
armed resistance to lawful authority.’ In addition they were charged that they
did ‘wickedly and feloniously, and seditiously, resolve and agree to form a
body, to be called the National Guard, and to be provided with arms, to be used
for the illegal and seditious purpose of effecting, by force and violence, or
by armed resistance to lawful authority, the said alterations of the laws and
constitution of the realm.’

In the current climate of apprehension and
fear, all of this was pretty damning.

Support for the Chartist movement had been
strong in Scotland during the earlier part of 1848, particularly in the large
cities, and this support was also extended to the formation of an armed
National Guard, whose purpose, by means of armed insurrection, would be to tie
up English forces, enabling the Irish to attack and overwhelm the English
garrisons in Ireland. Moreover, Robert Hamilton was reported in the Scottish
press to have declared, at a mass meeting at Bruntsfield Links, that he did not
see why a revolution could not take place here as well as in France, and that,
while at one time he would have been satisfied with the Charter, now he would
not be satisfied with anything less than a Republic.

Therefore, these men appeared to be
advocating the creation of an illegal armed force, followed by the destruction
of the constitution and the overthrow of the monarchy. Earlier Henry Ranken had
not spoken, on the whole, in so inflammatory a fashion, until he began to make
threats about the kind of armed force that was proposed, including the use of
such deadly weapons as ‘Warner’s long range’. This was a recently invented long
range missile, intended to blow up ships at a distance of up to five miles. In
the event, it was a failure, but at the time it may have seemed alarming.
Ranken also began to advocate that young men should provide themselves with
arms, should go to Ireland and assist the Irish revolutionaries, and should
accept nothing less than a Republic. John Grant’s role had been primarily to act as
chairman of the mass meeting at Bruntsfield Links in June, and to declare that
the resolution to form a National Guard had been adopted.

It was as a result of this meeting and
others, and the inflammatory speeches made, that the three men were arrested in
August and went on trial in November 1848. Ironically, support for Chartism had
already begun to fall away in June, so that a number of planned mass meetings
were poorly attended. Perhaps the extreme measures proposed – armed
insurrection and creation of a Republic – were too much to stomach for those
who supported the more reasonable original six articles of the Chartist
movement. Events on the Continent must also have alarmed many, who wanted no
part in such violence.

James Crauford, counsel for the prosecution

Up to early 1848, the treatment of the
Chartists in Scotland
had been restrained. As long as their meetings and rallies were orderly and
held primarily for the purpose of political discussion, the authorities were
willing for them to go ahead, while keeping a wary eye on them. It was when the
talk turned to an armed National Guard and the goal of Republican government
that the patience of the authorities snapped. Yet even the trial of the three
leaders was conducted with courtesy, the men being judged ‘all respectable men,
and, except as politicians, sensible’. James Crauford, counsel for the
prosecution, was praised for his ‘highly temperate address’, in a trial which
might well have called forth a good deal of impassioned and inflammatory
rhetoric.

The three Chartists retained, as counsel for
the defence, James Wellwood Moncreiff. Moncreiff was willing to undertake the
role of defence counsel not because he was a supporter of Chartism, but because
he had great sympathy for working men and a personal regard for the three
accused. Moncreiff was a skilled and shrewd lawyer, and managed to have a
number of points raised by the prosecution ruled inadmissible. He was also able
to bring forward a witness who swore that Ranken was opposed to the formation
of the National Guard, and had called for a public meeting in the hope of
putting a stop to the proposal. Ranken was, he said, ‘what was called a moral
force Chartist’. On the basis of this and other evidence, Moncreiff argued that
there was nothing criminal in holding Chartist opinions. Chartism was ‘a code
of politics quite as respectable in itself as any held by any other body of men.
A man was as much entitled to uphold the six points of the Charter, as any
other individual was entitled to hold his opinions, whatever they might be.’

James Wellwood Moncreiff counsel for the defence

The whole of Moncreiff’s address drew
applause. When the jury withdrew – for a mere half hour – they returned a
verdict of not proven on the charge of conspiracy against the three men. John
Grant was found not guilty of the charge of sedition. There remained the charge
against Ranken and Hamilton
of being ‘guilty of using language intended and calculated to excite popular
disaffection and resistance to lawful authority’. The jury found the two men
guilty of the charge, with the words ‘intended and’ omitted.

This threw the court into some confusion.
The judge pressed the foreman on whether the word ‘intended’ had been
deliberately omitted. It had. Moncreiff then seized the opportunity to argue
that the jury’s verdict meant that the men had not intended to produce that result. Intention was the essence of
the crime. Their actions had not amounted to sedition.

The ensuing confusion was debated by three
judges, who could not come to a unanimous decision on what the jury had
actually meant. If they had meant the men were not guilty, would they not have
said so? Should the men be sentenced to long periods of imprisonment, or set
free? In the end, leniency prevailed. All three were sentenced to just four months
in prison. Compared with some of the sentences handed out to English Chartists,
this was lenient indeed. In fact one leader of (non-Chartist) riots in Glasgow earlier that
year, George Smith, was condemned to eighteen years' transportation. To add to
the conflicting opinions, Lord Campbell, a member of the Cabinet, was to say
that he thought the verdict should have been one of acquittal.

There is an amusing postscript, as
Moncreiff revealed in his memoirs. Twelve or fourteen years later, at a
‘somewhat stormy’ meeting, a man jumped up and made ‘an admirable speech’ in
support of Moncreiff and his colleague. It was one of the three accused
Chartists (he does not say which).

I
thanked him afterwards, and expressed my surprise at the moderation of his
sentiments. ‘Ah,’ he replied, ‘it makes all the difference when a man has to
heed for his children.’ I found afterwards that he had been prosperous in his
trade and was a master manufacturer.

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